Ocean junk.
You’ve probably read the stats. They’re sad and terrifying and messed up.
There are more than 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. A whole lot of that is plastic bags, with shoppers worldwide are using approximately 500 billion single-use plastic bags per year. This translates to about a million bags every minute across the globe, or 150 bags a year for every person on earth. That number is rising, too.
100,000 marine creatures a year die from plastic entanglement, and these are just the ones found.
Waleed‘s latest rant about how fucked plastic bags are did some good in reminding us all to cut down on the plastic, but there’s a long way to go.
One ‘Strayan woman, Steph Gabriel, is doing something pretty dang cool to help.
Gabriel is a Sunshine Coast Environmental Scientist and founder of sustainable swimwear label, OceanZen Bikini, which uses an innovative and sustainable fabric made from recycled plastic bottles and fishing nets from the ocean to make cute as heck ‘kinis.
“The ocean is heavily polluted with marine debris – with predominately plastic items that don’t biodegrade,” explains the environmental scientist.
“Millions of tonnes of rubbish is dumped into our oceans every year and research shows that only 1 in 5 plastic bottles actually get recycled after single use. OceanZen swimwear is taking marine debris and transforming it into beautiful swimwear for ocean lovers to enjoy the sea, plastic – free.”
You can buy the bikini tops and bottoms separately, starting from $70AUD.
Photo: @oceanzen_bikini / Instagram.
